Of all the books on leadership I’ve worked through in my years as a peacemaking pastor, few have made a greater impact on me than this one. The publisher bills the text this way:

This book provides leaders and teachers a clear understanding of what the Bible teaches about love. This understanding is essential to you as an individual leader and to the church as a whole. It will significantly improve your relational skills, enhance your effectiveness in ministry, diminish senseless conflict and division, build a healthier church, and promote evangelism. If you lead or teach people in any capacity in the body of Christ, this book will help you become a more loving leader or teacher.

Strauch accomplishes those aims by working through the details of the Bible’s great love chapter–1 Corinthians 13–in parts one and two. Part three focuses on The Works of a Loving Leader.

These include practices like Caring for People’s Needs, Laboring in Prayer, Protecting and Reproving Loved Ones, Disciplining and Restoring the Wayward, Managing Conflict a “More Excellent Way,” and Practicing Hospitality.

Regarding hospitality for example, Strauch argues from Romans 12:10–“Love one another with brotherly affection”–that leaders must create loving community by bringing others into our homes.

Brotherly love entails knowing one another and sharing life together. Unless we open the doors of our homes to one another, the reality of the local church as a close-knit family of loving brothers and sisters is just one more empty religious theory. It is impossible to know or grow close to our brothers and sisters by meeting for an hour a week with a large group in a church sanctuary. It is through the ministry of hospitality that we provide the fellowship and care that nurtures true brotherly and sisterly love (100).

For an illustration of the effect produced by practicing hospitality, Strauch cites research conducted by a news reporter measuring church friendliness.

Each visit resulted in a rating based upon a point system. Greeters at the door–two points. Welcome form letter from the pastor–three points. Coffee hour–five points. Warm greeting from individuals–ten points. Personal invitations to dinner?” SIXTY POINTS!

Such is the power of hospitality.

If you lead others in your church in any capacity–but especially as a pastor–I urge you to include Leading with Love on your 2019 reading list.

Question: When have you been loved well by a leader practicing hospitality?

Don’t think of it as rushing things. Yes, I know we still have a few days left in December. And we still do have a copy of December’s resource of the month left in our resource center for anyone still needing to snag John Piper’s Momentary Marriage for a measly $5. Think of this post as a way to get a jump on the New Year with another great read.

January’s resource costs twice as much at $10 per copy, but I assure you it is worth the cost. I selected How to Read to Read the Bible for All Its Worthby Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart (Zondervan, third edition, 2003, 275 pages) for a time-sensitive reason. Beginning January 7 during the 9:30 AM Equipping Hour at OGC, we will commence three new classes in our discipleship scope and sequence. For more information on all three check your insert in tomorrow’s worship bulletin. Also, look for future blog posts on this site by all the instructors.

As we heard last week however, during the announcements, Ted Herrbach will teach the class called How to Study the Bible. Let me suggest that this handbook by Fee and Stuart would make an excellent companion text for Ted’s class for anyone intending to take it. Billed as “a practical approach to Bible study in an easy-to-understand style” the authors build most of the book (chapters 3-13) around the different genres of the Bible (Epistles, Old Testament narratives, Acts, the Gospels, Parables, Law, Prophets, Psalms, Wisdom, and Revelation). They explain why this particular approach in the introduction:

What we do hope to achieve is to heighten the reader’s sensitivity to specific problems inherent in each genre, to help the reader know why different options exist and how to make commonsense judgments, and especially to enable the reader to discern between good and not-so-good interpretations–and to know what makes them one or the other (p. 21).

They open with an informative chapter on choosing a good translation. While I would differ with their recommendation to favor the TNIV, they do make several good arguments for why consulting multiple translations makes sense for solid Bible study determined to get at the commonsense meanings of a text. Why they have so little to say about the ESV, given its widespread popularity in evangelical circles these days, puzzles me, but that does little to detract from the helpfulness of this resource. They close with an appendix on the evaluation and use of commentaries that includes suggested volumes for various books of the Bible.

Starting tomorrow we will have over twenty copies of this book for purchase in our resource center for $10 each. Why not get a head start on this important subject by picking up a copy to read over the New Year’s holiday, especially if you intend to take Ted’s class? If you want to avoid bad interpretation of the Bible and recognize that not bothering to learn interpretation skills is not the answer but rather doing good interpretation based on commonsense guidelines is a nonnegotiable, then this book is for you.

True to their mission to promote the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples by providing excellent resources at rock bottom prices they recently made available case lot quantities of John Piper’s first rate book on Christian marriage for a ridiculously low price. I purchased a case and determined to make This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence, (Crossway, 2009, 191 pages) our November resource of the month.

Piper explains his purpose in writing this way:

The aim of this book is to enlarge your vision of what marriage is. As Bonhoeffer says, it is more than your love for each other. Vastly more. Its meaning is infinitely great. I say that with care. The meaning of marriage is the display of the covenant-keeping love between Christ an his people (p. 15).

In the first third of the book, the author painstakingly unpacks that overarching theme showing how marriage between a husband and a wife ultimately points to the mystery that is Christ’s union with His church (Eph. 5:32). He shows how the gospel informs and shapes Christian marriage in chapters like Staying Married is Not Mainly About Staying in Love and God’s Showcase of Covenant-Keeping Grace and Forgiving and Forbearing and Pursuing Conformity to Christ in the Covenant.

In the second third of the book, Piper gives special attention to the responsibility of the husband to to practice what he calls lionhearted and lamblike headship and the responsibility of the wife to practice what he refers to as fearless submission. Rarely have I read a more balanced treatment of these challenging subjects.

The final third includes a brilliant twist one would rarely expect in a book on Christian marriage – two chapters on singleness! Single in Christ: A Name better Than Sons and Daughters, chapter 9, is a must read for anyone struggling with pangs of loneliness and feelings of being second class in the body of Christ for the absence of a spouse. Singleness, Marriage, and the Christian Virtue of Hospitality, chapter 10, lays down some challenges for both kinds of stewardship in the body of Christ. Singles, don’t think for a minute that you cannot profit from a book like this on marriage! These two chapters offer rich comfort and stirring conviction for your soul, if you will have them.

Along with the challenging subject of singleness, Piper also tackles sexual intimacy, childbearing, and divorce and remarriage. As always in all these things, he anchors his views in Scripture as he understands the Bible in each of these areas and writes with a pastoral heart for the peaks and valleys experienced by all in traversing the relational aspects of what it means to be male and female together.

Multiple copies of this book are now available in our resource center for only $5 each. For a free PDF download of the same book from Desiring God click here.

Here is my challenge, particularly to our married households in OGC. Christmas is coming. Let us determine that we will give ourselves and our church stronger marriages this Christmas. I want to challenge as many of you as are willing to take up the charge to get a copy, husbands and wives, and to read through this together, praying, discussing, and sharing all along how God would strengthen, change, and grow your relationship.

Whether your marriage suffers from particular distress right now or enjoys a season and pattern of blessedness, you can profit from this read. Pray with me that God will do a work in our households here at the end of 2012!

With the establishment of our sweet and newly-stocked resource center at our new building, the options overflow these first few months for choosing a book to feature for our reading and study enjoyment.

Scott Devor begins teaching a new equipping hour on this subject tomorrow morning during the 9:30 hour. This would make an excellent introductory volume for anyone desiring to do additional study. Don’t worry Greg and Joe, I have you covered in the October resource of the month – God’s Big Picture by Vaughan Roberts. Your turn is coming!

But another reason compelled me to start with Phillips’ book. With the opening of our facility we have a number of new folks in the mix. Some may very well be knew to reformed theology and not acquainted with TULIP as a way of summarizing these biblical truths as our spiritual forefathers have done. My hope is a resource like this will help answer a number of questions our newcomers may have about this important aspect of our teaching at OGC.

Indeed Phillips organizes his book largely around the TULIP acronym. After an opening chapter treating the greatness of God’s sovereignty in Scripture overall, he then proceeds to unpack, all with the same heading, What’s So Great About . . .

Total Depravity

Unconditional Election

Limited Atonement

Irresistible Grace

Perseverance of the Saints

The author states his aim in writing this way:

This book has two purposes. The first is to explain the doctrines of grace, also known as the “Five Points of Calvinism,” through the exposition of Scripture. In this, my aim is not to exhaust the biblical data or to engage in heavy biblical polemics with differing theological views. Instead, I seek to exposit definitive passages as they pertain to the respective doctrines. My approach is to present and explain the doctrines as plainly as possible by drawing out both the clear teaching of the Bible’s text and the necessary implications thereof. The second purpose is one that I find often neglected in treatments of distinctive Reformed doctrines, though to my mind is equally important. This purpose is to help believers feel the power of these precious truths in their lives. In other words, I aim not merely to teach the doctrines of grace, but to show what is so great about them. And how great they are! If we really believe the Bible’s teaching on the sovereign, mighty, and effectual grace of God, these doctrines not only will be dearly beloved, they will exercise a radical influence on our entire attitude toward God, ourselves, the present life, and the life to come (pp. xi-xii).

The book may lack for its omission of the historical background behind the formulation of these doctrines, but given the author’s agenda and desire to stay concise, we may forgive that. Especially helpful in each chapter is the answering of key objections to the teachings and a fleshing out of the implications of these truths in our lives.

I am happy to be able to offer copies of this work at only a donation of $8 thanks to our good friends at Reformation Trust. Pick up your copy tomorrow or some Sunday soon!

Now that we have occupied our new facility and now that we have a lovely dedicated space for displaying resources for sale to our people, I want to introduce a new feature of the blog beginning this month and I hope recurring every month from here on.

Welcome to the resource of the month!

We currently stock approximately forty different titles covering a wide range of subjects on the shelves in the middle of our entryway .

When I thought about which title would get top billing here in August, I immediately considered the fact that this month is missions month at OGC (hope to see you at 9:30 AM on Sundays this month in the auditorium for interviews with various ones of our missionaries). That would have made John Piper’sLet the Nations Be Glad an easy selection for promotion. However, I opted not to go that direction. I landed on J. D. Greear’s book Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. Why is that?

I do see a connection between missions month and Greear’s book. Only those held fast in the grip of the gospel will likely engage in Jesus’ mission to reach the world in global missions and the city in local outreach. It’s just too tough a sell otherwise. In getting a bunch of our folks to invest in a copy of Greear’s book, I hope to fan the flame of our church’s passion for both from a supernatural motivational perspective.

The author states his aim in the book quite plainly:

Over the next several chapters, I want to reacquaint you with the gospel. Not just with the doctrines, but with its power. The gospel is the announcement that God has reconciled us to Himself by sending His Son Jesus to die as a substitute for our sins, and that all who repent and believe have eternal life in Him. I want you to see the gospel not only as the means by which you get into heaven, but as the driving force behind every single moment of your life. I want to help, in some small way, your eyes to be opened (again) to the beauty and greatness of God. I want you to see how the gospel, and it alone, can make you genuinely passionate for God, free you from captivity to sin, and move you outward to joyful sacrifice on behalf of others (p. 5, emphasis mine).

Obviously J. D. Greear writes with a mission to believers in churches like ours . He wants to show us the vital importance of seeing the gospel as not just something we believed in the past but as something in which we stand and are being saved moment-by-moment in the present (1 Cor. 15:1-2).

He goes about that in a most practical way. He introduces in Part 2, the bulk of the book, what he calls the Gospel Prayer. I blogged on that elsewhere in the past so won’t repeat the concepts here. This feature and the practical application it offers in the challenge to pray this prayer daily as an antidote to gospel amnesia makes Greear’s book my choice for putting before us when, in fact, a good number of other books out there focus on the gospel as well – Matt Chandler’sThe Explicit Gospel and Greg Gilbert’s What Is the Gospelalso excellent options just to name two.

May I encourage you to invest in a copy of Pastor J D’s book? A number of copies are available on the shelves of our resource center for $10 each. You can put your cash or check in the payment box supplied on one of the shelves for your convenience.

Imagine with me, if you will, a church full of people who embrace this thought with which Greear closes on p. 248:

The gospel is not merely the diving board off of which you jumped into the pool of Christianity; the gospel is the pool itself. So keep going deeper into it. You’ll never find the bottom.

Fancy a swim in this particular part of the pool? You won’t regret it as you plumb further the depths of the glorious gospel of our blessed God (1 Tim. 1:11).

I’ve been putting our summer intern, Jacob Yarborough, (What a HUGE blessing he has been to us!) through a variety of paces so he can experience the range of responsibilities that come with pastoral ministry.

Today I challenged him to write a blog post on our new facility’s version of the resource center, something I’ve wanted to blog about for a while now. I post it here today with a few tweaks of my own.

With the new building comes change in many ways.

One of the things that underwent a change was the Resource Center. Before it consisted of a small bookrack on a table in the hallway of the SDA, now we have four great shelving units with many titles on display smack dab in the middle of our gathering space/entry way.

The purpose of the Recourse Center is to be just that, a resource for the spiritual life and well being of the flock at OGC. Our staff selected these titles specifically with the our congregation in mind. This collection of books and booklets is meant to educate, encourage, and equip the people of OGC by giving them a reliable source for quality reads without the trouble of researching authors or titles. Many of these books will help to establish a Christ-centered worldview that will serve to shape our everyday lives.

Please make the effort to stop by the Resource Center Book area in the main lobby sometime soon. There are over 30 different titles on display from authors like: John Piper, J.I. Packer, Ted Tripp, Francis Chan, and Mark Dever. There is a price chart on one of the shelves to let you know what the cost of the books is as well as a collection box to place payment in for any book that you might want. The money made from book sales will go back into restocking the shelves with more great books.

Some new titles just added to the shelves are: Welcome to a Reformed Churchby Daniel Hyde and What’s So Great about the Doctrines of Grace?by Richard Phillips. Both of these books are especially helpful to members and regular attendees of OGC, not to say newcomers unfamiliar with our tradition, who might want to expand their understanding of what it means to be reformed.

In the future we will be featuring a resource of the month to draw attention to strategic books that change people’s lives. Watch the announcement slides and blog posts in the future for more information.

Reading quality spiritual books makes a difference in our lives. Why not pick up one of these excellent titles this Sunday and dive in at your first available reading opportunity?

Unlike TV or movies, you can’t really go passive in the discipline of reading, especially works of nonfiction. You have to engage.

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren argue in their book How to Read a Book: the Classic Guide to Intelligent Readingthat reading more actively vs. less actively makes for the better reader who actually demands something of himself as he reads. Therefore he earns a higher return on his investment as opposed to the more passive type that coasts through a book or article.

Nowhere does this show itself more plainly than in tackling the work of a more demanding author. Case in point? William Wilberforce and his Practical View of Christianity. I saw that deer-in-the-headlights look from some of our men at Saturday’s Oxford Club meeting as we tried to make sense of the introduction. I likened the book to treasure to be mined, not at six feet under, but more like 600 feet under. It won’t give way to its rewards without a lot of digging.

In the interest of warding off attrition in our club meetings and in promoting the virtue of reading in a demanding kind of way, I pulled Adler and Van Doren’s book from the shelf looking for help.

Perhaps more insight will come in further posts, but let me start here with their simple prescription for active reading: Ask questions while you read–questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading. What questions, you may ask? They suggest the following:

There are four main questions you must ask about any book.

1. What is the book about as a whole? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics.

2. What is being said in detail, and how? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message.

3. Is the book true, in whole or part? You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not When you understand a book, however, you are obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make up your own mind. Knowing the author’s mind is not enough.

4. What of it? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested.

You don’t have to participate in the Oxford Club for Men to aspire toward becoming a demanding reader.

As for me and my house, the more demanding readers in our church, the better.

This Saturday our Oxford Club for Men dives into the introduction and first chapter of A Practical View of Christianity by William Wilberforce. For information on the meeting click here.

I confess I am eager to tackle such a challenging manuscript by someone long since gone to his heavenly reward for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is this counsel from another voice from the past, C. S. Lewis:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books…. Now this seems topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old…. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light…. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between…. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books (“Introduction” in On the Incarnation by Athanasisus, 3-5).

I can smell the salt air already. Hope to see many of the brothers on Saturday at 7.

Always on the lookout for resources and opportunities to war against the dreadful disease that is gospel amnesia, I gladly commend to our people this event billed as making the gospel clear for both the non-believer and the Christian.

On Saturday evening, April 21, at Crosspointe Church Orlando, Matt Chandler, Lead Pastor at the Village Church in Dallas Texas, will conclude his six-city tour with an evening service to share the gospel in a winsome and engaging manner, articulating the pertinence of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for both salvation and sanctification.

The purpose of this event is to make the gospel clear not only to nonbelievers, but also to those who have grown up in church their whole lives and aren’t seeing the staggering implications of the good news of grace. Also, Crossway Publishers will be promoting the release of Chandler’s new book, The Explicit Gospelalong with other Christian books to help people know Jesus and make Him known.

Someone has said, “You’ll be the same person next year except for the books you read and the people you engage.” Surely it isn’t as simple as that, but the force of the statement makes a valuable point. What we read and who we engage do make a difference in to what extent we grow from one year to the next. When Paul tells Timothy to demonstrate progress evident to all (1 Tim. 4:15) I take it to mean that logging another twelve months on the calendar with little to no recognizable change is something to fear in a good sense of the word.

So, how goes your reading this year? No book matters more than the Bible. Are you in the book of books? Are you persevering with your reading through the Bible in a year? Moses emphasized the importance of reading here above anywhere else with these words in Deut. 32:47 – “For it is not an idle word for you; indeed it is your life.” But what about other books? It’s already March. When was the last time you read a book on theology, marriage, family, parenting, the church, evangelism, prayer, missions, or a host of other weighty subjects? You make an investment in your spiritual progress when you read substantive books. Why not make a goal to read nine books between now and 2013? That’s only a book a month.

What about the people in your life? Paul writes in 1 Cor. 11:1 – “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” With whom are you spending time for the purpose of spiritual formation? Whom do you know going so hard after God that to imitate them would be for you to imitate Christ? When did you last ask someone to disciple you? To mentor you in spiritual things? To join you in a Fight Club? Nobody grows by accident. Perhaps it is time to get intentional about making progress in the things of God by connecting with others who will challenge your socks off.

What kind of people will we be come January 2013?

May our progress be evident to all for the books we have read and the people we have engaged!